[timjr21]

I am riding the Soma Juice with Avid disk brakes. I am riding a Bontrager disc wheelset - tubes required. A flat rear tire yesterday took a good 20 minutes out of my ride. Truth be told I was cold as hell and my mechanic skills leave something to be desired. I knew I would have to remove the caliper from its home in the rear tabs, but having to do this along with re-setting my surly horizontal dropout tensioner (for lack of a proper term) was a pain in the arse.

Any advice for me -or do I need to suck it up and practice more???

 

[ionsmuse]

Expensive but elegant solution, get a rear wheel with a Hope (or similar) bolt-on hub. Back the bolts all the way out, and the hub drops straight down. I use this on my Monkey and it works very well.

 

[GlowBoy]

Yep.

I am riding the Soma Juice with Avid disk brakes. I am riding a Bontrager disc wheelset - tubes required. A flat rear tire yesterday took a good 20 minutes out of my ride. Truth be told I was cold as hell and my mechanic skills leave something to be desired. I knew I would have to remove the caliper from its home in the rear tabs, but having to do this along with re-setting my surly horizontal dropout tensioner (for lack of a proper term) was a pain in the arse.

Any advice for me -or do I need to suck it up and practice more???

Pain in the arse would be a good description all right. My Surly KM is set up the same way. I've had to change flats in pouring rain in the dark along trafficked roads a couple of times, and I really cursed this design at that time.

Then after 3 years I finally figured out that if I line the notch in the rotor (Avid Clean Sweep) with the trailing edge of the caliper, I can remove and reinsert the wheel without loosening the caliper bolts. I also filed down the trailing edge of the lower part of the fork end slightly (in effect widening the opening by maybe 0.5mm) and that helped too.

And with an Avid Polygon rotor (wavy) wheel changes are a piece of cake. If you can't get the notch technique to work, try a wavy or other strongly shaped rotor.

- Dan

 

[mbjunky]

Changing tire

I just changed my tires from Nevegals to the Resolutions and experienced your pain. Afterward I went to the LBS and he said I should not have to remove the rear caliper to slide the rear wheel out. I have not tried it based on our conversation, so will just have to assume that that will work.

I still really enjoy the bike.

 

[GlowBoy]

I just changed my tires from Nevegals to the Resolutions and experienced your pain. Afterward I went to the LBS and he said I should not have to remove the rear caliper to slide the rear wheel out. I have not tried it based on our conversation, so will just have to assume that that will work.

I still really enjoy the bike.

LBSs don't always know what they're talking about here, unless they really specialize heavily in singlespeeds.

This is a very widespread problem on bikes that have the Juice's combination of track fork ends and slotted disc tabs (also shared by Bianchi singlespeeds, the Surly 1x1 and KM, and others). Some brake+rotor+axle position combinations work, some don't. For an LBS to say it "should" work is a gross oversimplification.

 

[Miker J]

Juice...

With Avids 160mm I need to loosen the caliper bolts but then slide the caliper all the way back to bottom-out where it seats in perfect alignment. I find the tire changes with the disk-trackend set up to take a bit more time but don't find it to be a big deal at all. I have a rear bolt on King and even run it with a 1x9 set up and it's no big deal.

 

[b3ksmith]

Expensive but elegant solution, get a rear wheel with a Hope (or similar) bolt-on hub. Back the bolts all the way out, and the hub drops straight down. I use this on my Monkey and it works very well.

Wouldn't this technique also work with a quick release?
Unscrew the quick release all the way out, and the wheel should
drop straight down.

b3ksmith

 

[GueroAZ]

I have a fully geared Juice and the first few times I swapped out tubes both on the trail and off took 15-20 minutes. Like anything else you get better with repetition. I actually flip the bike over on its seat and make sure its on the smallest cog then loosen the brake bolts. The hardest thing on the Juice is the removal and placement of the wheel when you're done. I have it down to about 5 minutes with a minimal amount of swearing. It's not good in a race but works good for recreational riding.

I would recommend just sitting in your back yard and practice for 30 minutes or so. With Avids you shouldn't have to realign the calipers when you tighten the bolts back.

 

[steelbike]

I've only flatted once on my Juice but it was in the middle of Wisconsin during July on a night ride. The hordes of mosquitoes made sure that I didn't stay in their territory too long. Pop the wheel off, throw in a tube, back on the bike, pump it up and get moving. The pumping took the most time. Bit about a dozen times in less than 5 minutes. If you have to change a tire faster, you will!

 

[GlowBoy]

Wouldn't this technique also work with a quick release?
Unscrew the quick release all the way out, and the wheel should
drop straight down.

Nope. Even if you pull the skewer out, the axle ends are still held in the dropouts and won't fall out.